followed the bench round the wall for several yards, then began to descend the steep wall by tacking back and forth on broken and extremely narrow ledges, with many footholds barely two inches wide. He was well down, when he missed his footing and fell. He tumbled outward, turned completely over, and, after a fall of about twenty feet, struck the wall glancingly, at the same time thrusting his feet against it as though trying to right himself. A patch of hair—and perhaps skin—was left clinging to the wall. A few yards below this, while falling almost head first, he struck a slope with all four feet and bounded wildly outward, but with checked speed. He dropped on a ledge, where with the utmost effort he regained control of himself and stopped, with three or four stiff plunges and a slide. From there he trotted over easy ways and moderate slopes to the bottom, where he stood a while trembling, then lay down.

One by one his flock came down in good order. The leaps of flying squirrels and the clever gymnastic pranks of monkeys are tame shows compared with the wild feats of these masters of the crags.

The flock, after playing and feeding about for an hour or more, started to return. The injured leader lay quietly on the grass, but with head held bravely erect. The two lambs raced ahead and started to climb the precipice over the route they had come down. One ewe went to the bottom of the wall, then turned to look at the big-horned leader who lay still upon the grass. She waited. The lambs, plainly eager to go on up, also waited. Presently the ram rose with an effort and limped heavily away. There was blood on his side. He turned aside from the precipice and led the way back toward the top by long easy slopes. The flock slowly followed. The lambs looked at each other and hesitated for some time. Finally they leaped down and raced rompingly after the others.

The massive horns of the rams, along with the audacious dives that sheep sometimes make on precipices, probably suggested the story that sheep jump off a cliff and effectively break the shock of the fall by landing on their horns at the bottom! John Charles Frémont appears to have started this story in print. Though sheep do not alight on their horns, this story is still in circulation and is too widely believed. Every one with whom I have talked who has seen sheep land after a leap says that the sheep land upon their feet. I have seen this performance a number of times, and on a few occasions there were several sheep; and each and all came down feet first. Incidentally I have seen two rams come down a precipice and strike on their horns; but they did not rise again! The small horns of the ewes would offer no shock-breaking resistance if alighted upon; yet the ewes rival the rams in making precipitous plunges.

The sheep is the only animal that has circling horns. In rams these rise from the top of the head and grow upward, outward, and backward, then curve downward and forward. Commonly the circle is complete in four or five years. This circular tendency varies with locality. In mature rams the horns are from twenty to forty inches long, measured round the curve, and have a basic circumference of twelve to eighteen inches. The largest horn I ever measured was at the base nineteen and a half inches in circumference. This was of the Colorado bighorn species, and at the time of measurement the owner had been dead about two months. The horns of the ewes are small, and extend upward, pointing slightly outward and backward.

The wildest leap I ever saw a sheep take was made in the Rocky Mountains a few miles northwest of Long's Peak. In climbing down a precipice I rounded a point near the bottom and came upon a ram at the end of the ledge I was following. Evidently he had been lying down, looking upon the scenes below. The ledge was narrow and it ended just behind the ram, who faced me only five or six feet away. He stamped angrily, struck an attitude of fight, and shook his head as if to say, "I've half a mind to butt you overboard!" He could have butted an ox overboard. My plan was to fling myself beneath a slight overhang of wall on the narrow ledge between us if he made a move.

While retreating backward along almost nothing of a ledge and considering the wisdom of keeping my eyes on the ram, he moved, and I flung myself beneath the few inches of projecting wall. The ram simply made a wild leap off the ledge.

This looked like a leap to death. He plunged down at an angle to the wall, head forward and a trifle lower than the rump, with feet drawn upward and thrust forward. I looked over the edge, hoping he was making a record jump. The first place he struck was more than twenty feet below me. When the fore feet struck, his shoulder blades jammed upward as though they would burst through the skin. A fraction of a second later his hind feet also struck and his back sagged violently; his belly must have scraped the slope. He bounded upward and outward like a heavy chunk of rubber. This contact had checked his deadly drop and his second striking-place was on a steeply inclined buttress; apparently in his momentary contact with this he altered his course with a kicking action of the feet.

There was lightning-like foot action, and from this striking-place he veered off and came down violently, feet first, upon a shelf of granite. With a splendid show of physical power, and with desperate effort, he got himself to a stand with stiff-legged, sliding bounds along the shelf. Here he paused for a second, then stepped out of sight behind a rock point. Feeling that he must be crippled, I hurriedly scrambled up and out on a promontory from which to look down upon him. He was trotting down a slope without even the sign of a limp!

Sheep do sometimes slip, misjudge a distance, and fall. Usually a bad bruise, a wrenched joint, or a split hoof is the worst injury, though now and then one receives broken legs or ribs, or even a broken neck. Most accidents appear to befall them while they are fleeing through territory with which they are unacquainted. In strange places they are likely to have trouble with loose stones, or they may be compelled to leap without knowing the nature of the landing-place.

A sheep, like a rabbit or a fox, does his greatest work in evading pursuers in territory with which he is intimately acquainted. If closely pursued in his own territory, he will flee at high speed up or down a precipice, perform seemingly impossible feats, and triumphantly escape. But no matter how skillful, if he goes his utmost in a new territory, he is as likely to come to grief as an orator who attempts to talk on a subject with which he is not well acquainted. It is probable that most of the accidents to these masters of the crags occur when they are making a desperate retreat through strange precipitous territory.

In the Elk Mountains a flock of sheep were driven far from their stamping-ground and while in a strange country were fired upon and pursued by hunters. They fled up a peak they had not before climbed. The leader leaped upon a rock that gave way. He tumbled off with the rock on top. He fell upon his back—to rise no more. A ewe missed her footing and in her fall knocked two others over to their death, though she regained her footing and escaped.

One day a ram appeared on a near-by sky-line and crossed along the top of a shattered knife-edge of granite. The gale had driven me to shelter, but along he went, unmindful of the gale that was ripping along the crags and knocking things right and left. Occasionally he made a long leap from point